There was a time when no one thought that America would be the first to send a man to the moon. Some even "derided the dream as lunacy." [Man on the moon: Kennedy speech ignited the dream, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/25/kennedy.moon/, May 25, 2001]. It only took strong leadership and vision to inspire the country to meet the challenge. Let's inspire investors, inventors and scientists to again to reach for the moon and find real solutions to our energy problems!
Does Cellulosic Ethanol Hold The Solution to Renewable Energy? See excerpts from http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/204_growing_energy_trailer.html:
DAN KAMMEN (Professor of energy and resources, public policy and nuclear engineering at the University of California-Berkeley; PhD in physics from Harvard University): What's happened in this country is there's been a series of
energy acts every few years. They've really been a cobbled together set of
subsidies. There's been no policy goals, there's been no statement like, we want
to be less dependent on foreign oil, we want to see the development of an
indigenous renewable energy industry. It's simply been a package of subsidies
that were done through the classic pork politics. So, there is absolutely no
policy."
JOSÉ WALTER BAUTISTA VIDAL (Brazilian physicist and biodiesel and
biofuel expert, credited as the "father" of Brazil's sugar cane-based ethanol
program): The flows of energy in the world can perfectly be managed. The more
energy we produce, the best it will be for everybody because it will not be
necessary to resort to war so that nations will survive. Of course when nations
are under pressure, they resort to war and we have to prevent this from
happening and the U.S. will play a fundamental role in providing harmony to the
world. I'm sure that the United States will do it...The flows of energy in the world can perfectly be managed. The more energy we produce, the best it will be for everybody because it will not be necessary to resort to war so that nations will survive. Of course when nations are under pressure, they resort to war and we have to prevent this from happening and the U.S. will play a fundamental role in providing harmony to the world. I'm sure that the United States will do it...The flows of energy in the world can perfectly be managed. The more energy we produce, the best it will be for everybody because it will not be necessary to resort to war so that nations will survive. Of course when nations are under pressure, they resort to war and we have to prevent this from happening and the U.S. will play a fundamental role in providing harmony to the world. I'm sure that the United States will do it."
VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN (Noted global energy expert, Vijay Vaitheeswaran
covered worldwide energy politics, economics, business and technology as a
correspondent for The Economist from 1998 to 2006): "What do we want from public policy? We want alternatives to oil, reduced geopolitical dependence on the Middle East, fuels that don't perpetuate global warming - these are the right goals for public policy. ...All ethanol is not created equal. America makes its ethanol from corn. Why? Because we have lots of corn and we have corn farmers who are very politically influential and we subsidize them to grow the corn, we subsidize the ethanol that we make from it, we have requirements that oil companies blend in that ethanol which is another kind of subsidy. The dirty little secret is corn is a lousy way to make ethanol. It's not environmentally friendly, it takes a lot of energy to grow the corn, to fertilize - corn itself is not an energy-intensive crop. This is, this is
terrible. You'd never do this if you really cared about the environment. We're
doing this mainly because we have politically influential politicians and
lobbyists from the Midwest."
DAN KAMMEN (Professor of energy and resources, public policy and
nuclear engineering at the University of California-Berkeley;PhD in physics from
Harvard University): "Well, corn is good. We like to eat it, it's very tasty,
and we grow a lot of it. So, it's good for America on one level. But ethanol
made from corn is not a good thing in terms of greenhouse gases. It's not worse
than gasoline, but it's marginally better. Maybe it's 15 percent better with a
big error bar."
STEVEN CHU (A Nobel Prize-winning physicist): "The reason
we're interested in cellulosic ethanol, or really more broadly, cellulosic
fuels, is that the potential of per acre of how much land you need, how much
water you need, how much extra nutrients like fertilizer you need in order to
make a certain amount of biofuel like ethanol could be as much as a factor of 10
more than you can get from corn. Cellulose is the material that comprises cell
walls in plants. It is a long chain of simple sugars that are linked together in
what's called a polymer. The idea here is that you take a cell wall, you
separate out those molecules to protect the cell wall from assault by fungi or
bacteria and what you end up with then are these long chains of sugars that you
take apart into simple sugars. And at that point you sprinkle the yeast to make
alcohol. Why not get a microorganism that takes the place of yeast to develop a
better biofuel than ethanol? So that's one of the immediate goals. Let's develop
better microorganisms that break down the cellulose and start to produce better
fuels. I hope 30 years from now that a substantial fraction of transportation
fuel will be raised through crops."
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